Disappointing. This reads like one of Stephenson's pseudonymous efforts, though it isn't quite as good as "Stephen Bury"'s The Cobweb. I found it a little amusing that Stephenson can spend pages writing about the intricacies of a gun collection, but that he refuses to invest more than a vague paragraph on a plot-relevant sexual encounter between two of the main characters.

I think at this point that I have to grudgingly admit that I don't know what I saw in his writing in the first place. It's ambitious, but more and more I think a lot of it is pretty dull.